“I’ve been working a long time . . . I really wanted to decide if this was going to take away too much . . . free time, did I really still enjoy doing it, did I have something to say, is it something I should be involved with still?” he said, mentioning how NBC moved the show from LA to New York to accommodate him when he joined as a judge in 2012.

Stern said he wanted a personal life — but that the “big black hole” inside of him demands the kind of attention he gets on a network show like “AGT.”